Cebulla was born in 1917 in the Upper Silesian village of Brinnitz to a working-class family. After attending primary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter.[1]: 96 [2]
After being drafted into compulsory labor service the in Reich Labor Service in 1937, Cebulla was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1938, where he served as a soldier throughout World War II. He then spent time as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union until 1949, during which he attended an anti-fascist school.[1]: 96–97 [2]
Cebulla returned to East Germany, where he joined the Volkspolizei, East Germany's national police force, as a guard and was soon promoted to command leader and later to house commander. That same year, he completed a one-year course at the Higher Police School in Dessau-Kochstedt. Between 1950 and 1953, he served as a department head and instructor in the Volkspolizei main administration. He was promoted to captain in 1951 after joining the ruling Socialist Unity Party.[1]: 97 [2]
In early 1953,[1]: 25 he joined the apparatus of the Central Committee of the SED as instructor in the Trafficking Department.[1]: 97 [2] The Trafficking Department was a clandestine department, responsible for secret courier services and money transfers to communist and socialist parties in capitalist countries,[3][4] especially the SED's West German affiliates, the German Communist Party and the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin, which received 70 and 15 million DM per year respectively.[5][6] The department additionally financed the Deutscher Freiheitssender 904, a clandestine radio station of the banned Communist Party of Germany (KPD).[1]: 65–69 Cebulla was initially appointed as one of five instructors responsible for "border work", coordinating secret transfers of material and people across the inner-German border to the KPD.[1]: 25
Unlike most other high-ranking department cadres, Cebulla had good relations with the Stasi.[1]: 44 Against the wishes of department head Adolf Baier, but with support from the Stasi,[1]: 25, 32, 91, 97 Cebulla was promoted to deputy department head on 15 July 1954,[1]: 97 [2] a position he would hold for the next 32 years, with a brief interruption from 1956 to 1959 to attend a three-year course at the "Karl Marx" Party Academy, where he graduated with a diploma in social sciences (Dipl.-Ges.-Wiss.).[1]: 97 [2]
While serving as deputy department head, he earned a doctorate in political sciences (Dr. rer. pol.) from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1971.[1]: 98 [2] Other department cadres, many disliking Cebulla for his closeness with the Stasi,[1]: 32, 98 alleged that his doctoral thesis was not written by him.[1]: 98
In October 1986, Cebulla succeeded the retiring Josef Steidl as department head. Cebulla had had a tense relationship with Steidl, as he had had with Baier.[1]: 98 : 99 [2][3][4][7] In this role, he worked closely with the secret foreign currencies procurement office "KoKo" under Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski.[1]: 150–151 Cebulla was responsible for personnel matters, while Schalck-Golodkowski handled economic affairs of the SED's secret companies in West Germany. In this arrangement, Cebulla was known by the handle "Szigulla".[1]: 38
Cebulla resigned during the Peaceful Revolution on 29 November 1989, only a few days ahead of the Central Committee's collective resignation. He was briefly succeeded by Gunter Rettner, head of the International Politics and Economics Department.[3]